Visible and Invisible

Henry James Sharp

Henry is a boy.

He is a simple, testosterone guided, shy-around-girls, nervous-about-the-future guy, who is only 16 and who is trying to find his way in this upside-down world that we call the 21st century.

But he knows exactly who he is, unlike many teenagers in the world who are trying to 'discover themselves.'

Henry James Sharp was born in Salt Lake City, Utah and lived there approximately six weeks. His mother had died directly after he was born, and he liked to think that she at least got to hold him and smile before the nurses yanked him out of her arms and attempted to save her life. His aunt and uncle took him in until he was old enough to go to school, and then it was off to boarding school after boarding school for him.

In school, he plays basketball and he passed all his classes with A's and B's, so in short, he is the average student. Hardly ever gets into trouble, doesn't do drugs, doesn't drink, no juvie record. He has dated before, but has yet to be in a relationship, which brings us to the topic of girls.

Henry is incredibly sensible about girls because he has it all sorted out in his head: there are the visible and the invisible.

The visible are the girls that make your eyes open a little wider, cause you to worry about your hair, and make you completely unable to focus on anything but them. They are the beautiful people, and they are dangerous. Not only can they change who you are in a heartbeat, but they can love you, hate you, taunt you, or tantalize you, and there is nothing you can do to stop them.

Then there are the invisible, and that classifies into many categories. There can be breathe-down-your-neck-stalk-you-twenty-four-seven invisible people who have a shrine of you in the back of their closet and you don't know they exist. Or there's those invisibles who cry every time you talk to a visible and secretly (or not so secretly) wish to be the pretty visible that you love. And, of course, let's not forget the kind of invisibles that can have a light up arrow above their heads and yet no one sees them. They are simply there.

And Henry cannot deal with either the visible or the invisible girls. So he waits for the girl who won't jeopardize his emotions but who still catches his eye. He waits for the girl who has a song to sing that only he will understand and words to say instead of like's and um's or stuttering gibberish that tests his patience.

He waits.